Category Archives: Self-doubt

Only Wish I Had Amnesia

I only wish I had amnesia. I only wish I could forget. Locked away inside a vault but not forgotten, never forgotten. The banging on the door, the inhumanness that emanates from Behind… I can’t escape. I can’t leave. This is my castle. And I am besieged. Invaders at the gate, foul beasts bring about their war machines. My men fortify the doors and knock their ladders from the walls but we all know that one day these walls will fall. Perhaps I’ll let my monsters out to tear apart the their kin.

Is There Anyone Out There?

Where to again?

Where would you have me go?

“You know I’d do anything for you, my love”

Split between a thousand paths

Some fork in the road, yeah?

Lost again

I’m off the trail

They’ll never find me now

I forgot to tell a friend

I walk again through these woods

Birds ever so softly chirping in their trees

Finding a distinct lack of bees

It only hurts a little more without you here

A feeling in my chest like a submarine out of power, stuck a thousand leagues under the sea

Crushed and broken

Spent my last token

My submarine in pieces

I too lie crushed and broken

Torn apart by sharks and crabs and angler fish

I am forgotten under the sea

May they never find my body

I’d rather they not see

What’s really happened to me

An Honest Day’s Work

What is an honest day’s work? Certainly not what happens here. It all feels so hollow. So… inconsequential. Nothing really happens here. Numbers go up, numbers go down. Meetings all day, every day. Nothing really changes. Same thing. Day in, day out. Sit at a desk. Walk to get coffee. Back to the desk. Maybe take a vacation at the end of the year. Go to Bali or Cancun. Whatever. No adventures, no quests, no treks. Back to the office, back home, clacking keyboards and haughty metronomes. A building full of cardboard cutouts that never seem to wither or fold. All oblivious to the pain that lies underneath a thin veneer of niceties and falsehoods told and retold until hearts give out and cubicles are emptied.

Faring Not So Well

Almost as if

The feeling itself

That being numb

It might be better

But whether it’s the former or the latter

Here I sit

Dreaming of forgotten malls

And Taj Mahals

Wishing I could feel something other than the one that gnaws

At my heart

At my bones

On my mind

And on my toes

Can you hear them?

Can you feel them?

Phantoms and spectres

Invisible

Screaming

Begging

My heart, it begs the question:

“Love me?”

What A Day To Wake Up

Not hungover, not particularly in shambles or anything of the sort. Simply feeling rotten and worried about the many things you’re under pressure to do and be a part of. The many thoughts and feelings you have that you so desperately try to repress. It doesn’t help to bottle it up. It helps to let it go. Try not to shake the bottle though, lest the contents explode. That would make a mess.

Sure to be Dying

Roiling, riling, writhing in my gut

A pit’s been dug, just for the bodies

Found myself in quite the rut

They’ll find me, they’ll find you

Always searching, one and two

Always looking for something new,

Something evil to do

Sick to my stomach

Try to find that thing I still lack

It feels like flying

Though we’re sure to be dying

It hurts like hell

As bloated midsection swells

Ain’t it swell?

The stories of great evil that it tells

Which Poem, This Poem?

I look around at all these people and surely they notice me. Surely I am not invisible. Surely too they have their thoughts and feelings and opinions of me, but I… I move unabated, unfettered, and unmolested through the streets and forests as if I’d been noticed by no one. Surrounded by people and not alone, but… I’m not sure. There always seems to be a but, whether it’s a joke or an “I love you”. I take solace in myself, in my writing. Still I yearn for more. How could I help but to want all that I have seen in my dreams? So vivid and so real yet so far away and I remain inhibited by Byzantine bureaucracy and the constraints of having not been born into a trust fund. Easier said than done, I suppose. Let’s get a drum roll going because I have for you something that I hope will make you think. A daily exercise of mind that may help keep you from taking a certain grippy sock vacation. Without further ado:

See Bird

Yes, I just ate

Something to so sate

That hunger, that desire

Something new I hope to sire

There’s a fire

Burning

Hope to never tire

The pages again, turning

Something new I’ve been learning

Where are those wild things

The ones I thought I’d find

I read the book and saw the movie

Feel as though I’ve been out-swined

To lie to a boy

Different than a lie to a man

The man will know, the man will change

The boy?

It is all he knows

And so it comes to pass

These lies are all he sows

How deafening are the calls of crows

Vociferous Cawing

Hear their gnawing

Bones creak and crack

Like so many planks of an old sea-worn carrack

Do you answer the call of the one who knows?

All those shiny pearls now burned to black.

Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall?

Who is the fairest of them all? The strongest? The smartest? The goodest? I ask again, O’ Mirror, reflection of all, Who is the rarest of them all? A man apart from the rest. A man and not a boy. Can you see the writing on the wall? Read the lines, not between. See the stars in your eyes and tell me what they’re made of.

Man in the Mirror

A pockmarked face

Marred by decision and derision

Marked by contention

I don’t look like such a young man anymore

Staring straight into those eyes

Meet a man who tells no lies

Not to me

Not to you

He wears his wares upon his chin

As tears they wear upon his cheeks

And smile lines race against his pursing lips

A face so seldom understood,

Worn by pages made from wood

In the mirror, seeing leather

What is a man, but a bird without feather?

I want to fly

So high in the sky

And with my little eye

A thousand things I’d spy

Not the least of which is you, me

The one I cannot help but be

That one inside the mirror I see